Raines. During the week leading up to the race, Gordon's wife gave birth to their son, Leo Benjamin Gordon. Gordon said that he was not planning to retire until his son could see him in victory lane. Before the race, Kevin Harvick led the Drivers' Championship with 3,210 points, and Jeff Gordon stood in second with 3,025 points. Jeff Burton was third in the Drivers' Championship with 2,895 points, Kurt Busch was fourth with 2,892 points, and Jimmie Johnson was in fifth with 2,882 points. In the Manufacturers' Championship, Chevrolet was leading with 158 points, twenty-seven points ahead of their rival Toyota. Ford, with 102 points, was nine points ahead of Dodge in the battle for third. Brian Vickers was the race's defending champion. Practice and qualifying Three practice sessions were held before the Sunday race—one on Friday and two on Saturday. The first session lasted 90 minutes. The Saturday morning session lasted 45 minutes, and the final practice session was 60 minutes in length. During the first practice session, Jeff Burton was quickest with a time of 38.479, ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya and Kevin Harvick in second and third. Carl Edwards followed in the fourth position, ahead of Greg Biffle in fifth. In the Saturday morning session, Biffle was quickest, ahead of Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne in second and third. Burton and Kurt Busch followed in the fourth and fifth positions. In the final practice session for the race, Jimmie Johnson was quickest with a time of 38.742. David Ragan followed in second, ahead of Jeff Gordon and Harvick in third and fourth. Biffle, who was quickest in second practice, only managed fifth quickest. Denny Hamlin, who won at Michigan International Speedway in the spring, was having a difficult time trying to improve the car handling of the race car he won with. Hamlin said, "It's going all right. We were about like we were here in [June] as far as speed. We're a little bit slow on speed as far as qualifying, but we feel like the race stuff is pretty competitive." His teammate Kyle Busch was also struggling, adding, "Our [car] was loose off. We jumped back and forth in practice from tight to loose. We picked up from practice, but we couldn't rotate the center like I wanted to." During qualifying, forty-seven cars were entered, but only forty-three will be able to race because